Written by Neil Patel on July 19, 2016

What is the cornerstone of any content/SEO campaign?

Keyword Research.

It’s the most fundamental aspect of online marketing. If you can latch onto the long-tail low-hanging phrases that aren’t competitive in the search results, you can grow your website with much less effort. I showed you four such case studies in this article.

It’s a cold hard truth:

Without finding the right keywords (or subjects) to write about on your website, all of your content efforts might fail.

What’s interesting is that the way of finding these phrases that are being used by your target audience has dramatically changed over the years. Instead of relying on the monthly search volume and exact-match keyword stuffing in the titles/body of your content, marketers are now required to primarily focus on contextual relevancy.

There are many ways to assess the competitiveness of keywords and perform research. Every marketer seems to have found his own working way, which is often a mix of his intuition and the results from SEO tools.

What I want to focus on in this article, though, are the limitations of keyword research. Sure, you’re performing market research that’s helping you understand your customer. But, you must understand the conditions under which your insights hold true.

So, I’m presenting 5 limitations of keyword research that might mess with your marketing campaigns. Note that most of the data on keywords is derived from Google. So, most of the limitations also arise from studying the results inside theGoogle Keyword Planner.

1. Keyword averages inside the Google Keyword Planner show you a skewed picture

You must have used the keyword planner on numerous occasions to find keywords for your campaign. It shows a neat little monthly keyword volume that many marketers rely on to decide whether or not they want to pursue a particular keyword.

But, have you ever pondered from where Google arrives at this average value?

What does that mean for the accuracy of your research?

Well, the average of 10, 100 and 1000 is 366.67.

But 367 isn’t a good representation of this wildly varying sample. So, if you’re dealing with outliers, like 10 and 1000 in this example, the average number is extremely misleading.

If your niche has a seasonal spike in certain keywords, due to live events or festivities, then you can get fooled by the keyword planner and end up chasing keywords that don’t give you consistent traffic.

The fix?

Go after the number in the middle of your sorted list…

It gives the most accurate representation of your sample.

But, Google won’t allow you to export individual month search volumes. And, it’s a lot of effort to do it for every keyword.

A better solution is to just hover over your keyword and look at the volume of searches over time.

In the above case, the peak volume is around 8,000 and the minimum is around 3,000. So, even though your audience searches the keyword often during certain months, it can deliver good traffic year round.

But, what if the search pattern for your target keyword is highly variable?

For example, the average monthly search volume for ‘snow shoveling’ is 8,100.

If you dig down into the monthly volume variations of the keyword, you’ll probably not be surprised.

The searches almost exponentially spike in winter months, but there’s a huge summertime drought.

Are you willing to trade your content creation and promotion efforts to get traffic for a mere 3 months, especially given that you’ll need at least a couple of weeks (or possibly 3 months) for your content focused on the keyword to even appear in search results.

Generally, you want to go after keywords that have fairly consistent keyword volume all year long.

There’s an exception to the rule – if you find that a keyword is picking up steam recently, then you must go after it. Its graph will look something like this.

These will sometimes be branded strategy keywords, like “skyscraper technique” or “content shock”. Sure, the websites that coined the term will rank at the top, but you can easily grab the spots below (until everyone in the industry writes about them and they become competitive).

You can find such trending subjects from Google Trends. For example, the keyword “how to paint a car” has had a relatively stable growth rate since 2011.

But, if I want to find a related emerging query, I can scroll to the bottom to see these “Related Stories:”

If your website is temporal in nature and relies on news-type content, then you should definitely go after such seasonal keywords. I’ve also shown you how you can get your news website added to Google News and get real-time traffic from the 6 billion clicks that it sends to publishers every month.

2. Keyword volumes are not just averages. They are also rounded-off

The search volumes you see inside Keyword Planner won’t always add up for different locations.

This happens because Google just throws similar keyword volumes into certain buckets for convenience in dealing with data. So, if you’re targeting lesser searched long-tail keywords, you might only experience rounding up to the nearest 10.

But, at larger monthly search volumes (head keywords), this can potentially obscure differences of even 10,000 searches/month between keywords.

Here’s an example of this anomaly for the keywords “basketball games” and “baseball scores.” Note that the Keyword Planner shows an average keyword monthly volume of 210,000 for both keywords. Now, look at the actual difference.

Research by Russ Jones and his team found that Google has 85 such traffic buckets that are logarithmically proportioned. So, the bigger the search volume, the less accurate and trusted the numbers can be. The largest buckets have a difference of up to a quarter of a million searches per month.

They have pretty much formed a magazine network and use their brand authority to gain huge traffic numbers for their new websites.

He even showed that for competitive keywords in most popular niches (including technology, food, travel and software) these companies have already gained complete control.

It’s sad to see that Google prefers to see certain websites and brands in its search results.

But, how does it relate to your keyword research?

Some specific keywords will contain only certain types of websites in the results. Your website might not be able to compete with them – even if you find that the pages in the SERP aren’t authoritative and are less competitive.

For example, certain commercial keywords, like “shirts for female” contain only eCommerce websites in the results. Good luck ranking for the keyword with yourcontent website.

Similarly, you might see .edu domains or geography specific websites dominating the search results for specific keywords. Hayden coined the term ‘lean SERP’ for thismonopolizing of search results by Google and he advises you to reconsider trying to compete with them.

My recommendation is also to skip such doubtful keywords, even though your intuition or the algorithm of a keyword tool might deem them as low-competition.

4. Google isn’t showing you the complete picture

Then, he performed a search for the main keyword “blog traffic” in Google’s keyword tool to compare the suggestions that it showed.

Rand was confused, because many terms that showed in his analytics weren’t displayed in the planner. Then, he performed an exact search for these keywords and found that the tool does have data on these keywords, but that Google chose to hide keywords from the broad search.

He found that 50% of the related terms weren’t suggested by the keyword tool.

Which means there will be plenty of missed keyword targeting opportunities if you rely solely on Google Keyword Planner for keyword research.

Unless you can’t think of random keywords from thin air and enter them manually, you will miss many related keywords inside Google Keyword Planner.

Google has increasingly been hiding keyword data from webmasters. With the launch of the keyword planner,Google abandoned showing search volume data for different devices and global vs. local searches.

One way of discovering additional hidden keywords that you might target is by using Google’s search suggest data.

You can also use wildcards, like ‘_’ at the start of your query to find more opportunities.

Or, even in between two words in your queries.

An even better solution is using additional tools, like Long Tail Pro for digging up longer keywords and SEO tools, like Ahrefs,to reverse engineer the keywords your competitors rank for.

I’ve listed 5 more keyword methods, including Udemy, Twitter and Quora in this articlethat you can add to your marketing arsenal.

5. Algorithm based keyword tools might sometimes misbehave

Perrin recently performed an extensive analysis on the best keyword research tools in the market. This included Ahrefs, SEMRush, Long Tail Pro and Moz’s Keyword Explorer.

If you’re a seasoned marketer, you must have used at least one of the above tools in your campaigns at some point of time.

So, a major convenience that these keyword tools now provide to the marketers is a keyword difficulty score on the scale of 0 to 100.

It becomes so much easier and efficient to solely check a keyword’s difficulty score inside the tool, rather than checking the backlinks and other aspects of all the top results in the SERPs.

Long Tail Pro clearly states that a keyword with a score of up to 30 can be deemed low competition.

All of the other tools also give you a score.

But, the funny part is that most of them don’t understand what their keyword competition score means.

It seems like they have put out the score, just because everyone else in the market was offering it.

Bummer.

So, you should consider this score only as a relative qualitativemetric, inside the ecosystem of the tool. But, you’ll have to rely on your intuition and assess the SERP pages manually as well.

As per Perrin’s interpretation of keyword difficulty scores for 13 keywords – Long Tail Pro and Moz were found to give the most accurate results.

Again, though, I would recommend that you use these results for reference purposes only. The final judgement call on targeting keywords is critical for the success of your campaigns and should also depend on your understanding of your niche/audience.

Conclusion

Keyword research relies on a bunch of tools and data from Google. But, it’s easy to overlook their limitations and dedicate months of effort trying to rank for keywords that don’t affect your bottom line.

I listed five constraints in this article, along with the possible actionable solutions that you can implement for mitigation of the negative effects. I hope you keep these in mind while performing keyword research in the future.

Have you ever faced any of the above challenges in your keyword research? Or, are there any other limitations not listed in the article that you’ve personally encountered? I would love to hear about them in the comments.

My STARTUP :

Let me introduce myself. My name is Richard Nata.I am an author, novelist, blogger and ghost writer. My articles, including short stories have been published in magazines and newspapers since 1994. I have written a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction. So I was a professional in the field of writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

I was born in Jakarta, August 17, 1968.

In 1988, at the age of 20 years, I started working as an accounting staff. Age 24 years has occupied the position of Finance Manager. Age 26 years as a General Manager.

In 1994, my articles published in magazines and tabloids.

In 1997, I wrote a book entitled "Buku Pintar Mencari Kerja". This book is reprinted as much as 8 times. Through the book, the authors successfully helped tens of thousands of people get jobs at once successful in their careers. They were also successful when moving to work in other places.

In 1998, I started investing in shares on Bursa Efek Indonesia (Indonesia stock exchange). As a result of investing in the stock market then I can provide consulting services for companies that want to go public in Indonesia stock exchange.

In theory, in 10-20 years into the future, my startup income, amounting to hundreds of million USD annually can be obtained easily. AND IF FOLLOWED BY MANY COMPANIES IN THE WHOLE WORLD WILL THEN BE A NEW INDUSTRIAL worth trillions USD.

To be honest. Currently I'm not having a lot of money. So I start marketing my startup with blogspot.

My STARTUP :

A story with millions of choices in it - looking investor like you.

Try to imagine this. When you're reading a story on the web or blog, you are given two choices. You can choose the next story based on your own choice. After selecting then you can continue reading the story. Shortly afterwards you will be presented back to the 2 other options. The next choice is up to you. Then you continue the story you are reading. After that you will be faced again with 2 choices. So onwards. The more stories you read so the more options you have taken.

If you feel curious then you can re-read the story by changing your selection. Then you will see a different story with the story that you have read previously. The question now is why is this so? Because the storyline will be varying according to your choice.

I, as the author is planning to make tens of thousands of articles with millions of choices in it. With tens of thousands of articles then you like to see a show of your favorite series on TV for several years. The difference is while watching your favorite TV series, then you can not change the story. Meanwhile, if you read this story then you can alter the way the story according to your own choice.

You might say like this. Sounds like a book "choose your own adventure". Books I read when I was young.

Correctly. The idea is taken from there. But if you read through a book, the story is not so exciting. Due to the limited number of pages. When a child first you may already feel interesting. But if you re-read the book now then becomes no fun anymore because you don't get anything with the amount of 100-200 pages.

Have you ever heard of game books? When you were boy or girl, did you like reading game books? I think you've heard even happy to read it.

A gamebook is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making effective choices. The narrative branches along various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages.

Lihat preview menurut Yahoo

Bantam Books with the Choose Your Own Adventure series has produced more than 250 million US dollars. While I offer you more powerful than the Choose Your Own Adventure. Because of what? Because the story that I made much more interesting than the stories created by the authors of Bantam Books. You will not get anything just to 100-200 pages. While the story that I created is made up of tens of thousands of articles with millions of choices in it.

Based on the above, then you are faced with two choices. Are you interested in reading my story is? Or you are not interested at all. The choice is in your hands.

If you are interested then spread widely disseminated this article to your family, friends, neighbors, and relatives. You can also distribute it on facebook, twitter, goggle +, or other social media that this article be viral in the world. By doing so it is a new entertainment industry has been created.

WHY DO I NEED STARTUP FUNDS FROM INVESTORS? I NEED A LOT OF FUNDS FROM INVESTORS BECAUSE I HAVE TO LOOKING FOR EXPERT PROGRAMMERS(IT).BECAUSE THE DATA IS HANDLED IS VERY LARGE, IT MAY HAVE TO WEAR SOME PROGRAMMERS(IT).I CAN NOT WEAR SOME FREELANCE PROGRAMMER BECAUSE THE DATA MUST BE MONITORED CONTINUOUSLY FROM VIRUSES, MALWARE, SPAM, AND OTHERS.IN ADDITION FUNDS FROM INVESTORS IS ALSO USED TO BUY SERVERS WITH VERY LARGE CAPACITY. FUNDS ARE ALSO USED TO PAY EMPLOYEE SALARIES AND OPERATIONAL COSTS OF THE COMPANY.

FUNDS CAN ALSO BE USED FOR ADVERTISING AND OTHER MARKETING STRATEGIES.FUNDS CAN ALSO BE USED TO ADVERTISE MY STARTUP AND OTHER MARKETING STRATEGIES.

IF I GET A VERY LARGE FUND, THE PART OF THE FUNDS USED TO TRANSLATE THE STORY INTO VARIOUS LANGUAGES.With more and more languages, the more readers we get.

WITH MORE AND MORE READERS, THE MORE REVENUE WE GET.

AS AN INVESTOR THEN YOU DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL ANXIOUS ABOUT YOUR FUNDS. BECAUSE YOUR FUNDS WILL NEVER BE LOST BECAUSE IN 3-5 YEARS YOU HAVE RETURNED THE FUNDS COUPLED WITH PROFIT.

THIS BUSINESS IS ONE AND THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD.

If we can make a good story, so that the readers will come again and again for further reading the story then our earnings will continue to grow and will never diminish. This is due to new readers who continued to arrive, while long remained loyal readers become our customers.

So that the number of our readers will continue to multiply over time. With the increasing number of loyal readership then automatically the amount of income we will also grow larger every year. The same thing happened in yahoo, google, facebook, twitter, linkedin, and others when they still startup.

Deuteronomy {28:13} And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do [them: ]

Try to imagine this. If I give a very unique story. It was the first time in the world. But the world already know this story even liked it. Because the world love the game books. While the story that I made is the development of game books.

Do you Believe ifI dare say if I will succeed because my story will be famous all over the world as Harry Potter?

I believe it. Not because I was the author of the story, but because of the story that I made is unique and the only one in the world.

Income from my startup :

1. Ads. With millions of unique visitors, the price of the ads will be expensive.

2. Affiliate marketing. In addition to advertising, we are also able to put up some banner from affiliate marketing.

3. Contribution of the readers. If you have a million readers and every reader to pay oneUS dollarper year then you will get the income of one million US dollars per year.

If you have a million readers and every reader to pay one US dollar per month then you will get as much revenue twelve million US dollars per year.

4. Books and Comics. After getting hundreds of thousands to the millions of readers of the story will be made in books and the form of a picture story (comics).

5. Movies. If we have a good story with millions of readers then quickly we will be offered to make a film based on the story.

6. Merchandise related to characters. After the movies there will be made an offer for the sale of goods related to the characters.

7. Sales. With millions of email that we have collected from our readers so we can sell anything to them.

Each income (1-7) worth millions to tens of millions of US dollars.

Because each income (1-7) worth millions to tens of millions of US dollars. Then in 10-20 years into the future, AI will be earning hundreds of million USD annually.

So how long do you think my story that I made could gather a thousand readers? Ten thousand readers? One hundred thousand readers? A million readers? Five million readers? Ten million readers? More than ten million readers?

But to get all of it of course takes time, can not be instant. In addition, it takes hard work, big funds and placement of the right people in the right positions.

By advertising, viral marketing, strong marketing strategies and SEO then a million readers can be done in less than a year. Ten million readers can be done in two to three years.

This is the marketing strategy of my startup.

When hundreds of thousands or millions of readers already liked my story then they have to pay to enjoy the story that I made.

If you are a visionary then you will think like this.

With the help of my great name in the world of business, my expertise in marketing, advertising, marketing by mouth, viral marketing, then collecting a million readers to ten million readers will be easy to obtain. Is not that right?

The question now is what if people like my story as they like Harry Potter? You will get tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of email addresses from readers. With that much email, we can sell anything to the readers.

Since April 2013, Wikipedia has around 26 million articles in 285 languages are written by 39 million registered users and a variety of anonymous people who are not known from other parts of the world. Web ranked by Alexa, Wikipedia is a famous website number 6 which has been visited by 12% of all Internet users with 80 million visitors every month and it is only from the calculation of America.

So do not delay. Invest your money immediately to my startup. Take A Look. There are so many advantages if you want to invest in my startup.

WHY YOU SHOULD INVEST YOUR MONEY RIGHT NOW? .

IF YOU INVEST YOUR FUNDS IN ONE, TWO OR THREE YEARS INTO THE FUTURE, YOU MAY BE TOO LATE.BECAUSE IN 1-3 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE THEN I'VE GOT THE FUNDS. THE FUNDS CAN COME FROM SOME INVESTORS, LOANS FROM BANKS OR FROM ADVERTISEMENTS POSTED ON MY BLOG.IF I'VE GOT A LARGE AMOUNT OF FUNDS THEN I'VE NO NEED OF YOUR FUNDS. SO INVEST NOW OR NOT AT ALL.

My BLOG started to be written January 11, 2015. TODAY, MAY 30, 2015, THE NUMBER OF CLICKS HAS REACHED 56,750. SO FAR SO GOOD.

If I get big funds from investors then with a quick story that I wrote will spread throughout the world.So I got acceleration because I can put ads in a large variety of media such as Google AdWords, Facebook, and others. I also can perform a variety of other marketing strategies.

If I do not get funding from investors then my story would still spread throughout the world. But with a longer time, Slow but sure.So either I get funding from investors or not, the story that I wrote will remain spread throughout the world. Ha ... 7xSo don't worry, be happy.

My advice to you is you should think whether the data that I have provided to you makes sense or not .

If my data reasonable then immediately invest your funds as soon as possible.

Then we discuss how we plan further cooperation.

Thank you.

Lord Jesus bless you.

Amen

P.S. The offer letter I gave also to the hedge funds and venture capital and other major companies in the entire world. So who is fast then he will get it.